Deadline film review

Murder. Mystery. True story. All things I love about a movie. Take a look at the trailer. It draws you in, wants to be watched. Unfortunately, about an hour into the movie, I didn't feel the same way at all. The story follows Matt Harper, a reporter for the Nashville Times, as he digs into the facts about the murder of a young African American boy nineteen years earlier. This story has all the raw material to be a great movie, but the writing was just awful. The characters are quite shallow and their behavior is very cliché. The story starts meandering about and has a hard time keeping your interest to the end. The acting was ok, but not great. Bottom line: the trailer made promises the full movie did not deliver.

Homeless for the Holidays

"Homeless for the Holidays" is a family friendly movie based on true events.  I was provided a copy of this movie to review with no obligation.

There's really a demand for movies with Christian values that the whole family can watch.  If you look at the reaction to movies like "Passion of the Christ" and "Facing the Giants", you can see that people want movies that reflect their values and tell great stories.  Unfortunately, Hollywood doesn't usually do a good job at making those kind of movies. They are good at the lighting, audio, camera work, and acting but not at writing stories that reflect family values.  Most Christian productions are good at reflecting the values, but not the technical aspects. Unfortunately, this movie is another example of that. "Homeless for the Holidays" is a heartwarming story, but it's very hard to tell past the bad writing, acting, lighting, video, and audio. Even allowing for the low budget, the movie was quite bad.  I really wanted to like it, but I just didn't.

I sincerely hope the makers of this movie take what they've learned from this experience, get better, and try again, because we need more good family movies.